Audio 3:56
Cricket scandals prompt team management questions

Mary GearinUpdated
Thu 13 Jun 2013, 9:35 AM AEST

With just a few weeks to go till the start of the Ashes campaign in England, Australia's cricketers are once again in the headlines for the wrong reasons. Opening batsman David Warner has been dropped from Australia's one-day side, pending a disciplinary hearing over an incident in a pub last weekend. English officials claim Warner made an unprovoked attack on their batsman Joe Root.

Transcript

TONY EASTLEY: With just a few weeks to go till the start of the Ashes campaign in England, Australia's cricketers are again in the headlines but for the wrong reasons.

Opening batsman David Warner has been dropped from Australia's one-day side, pending a disciplinary hearing over an incident last weekend.

English officials claim Warner attacked their batsman Joe Root where the two teams were at the Walkabout Inn in Birmingham.

It's believed Warner's defence is that the English player was using a fake beard to impersonate South Africa's cricketer Hashim Amla and Warner perceived this as a slur on the Muslim star.

Europe correspondent Mary Gearin reports.

JIM MAXWELL (commentating): Four for 151, they've taken a refreshment break here...

MARY GEARIN: The man carrying the drinks for Australia as they played New Zealand at Edgbaston should have been at the crease.

But David Warner was out, suspended, and facing a scandal the English media is already interpreting as a good sign for the home side this summer.

BBC COMMENTATOR: And it all adds to a sense that Australian cricket is almost unravelling and we're still, what, four weeks away from the Ashes.

It's said to have happened in Birmingham's Walkabout pub at the weekend, hours after England beat Australia in their ICC Champions Trophy match at Edgbaston.

Matt de Leon is a Walkabout spokesman.

MATT DE LEON: There was a small altercation between Warner and Root, but this was dealt with very amicably and very, very quickly by the rest of the group they were with. And both of them were chatting calmly to each other again immediately afterwards.

MARY GEARIN: There's nothing from your point of view that you can say about what caused the incident?

MATT DE LEON: No. We don't know what the conversation was beforehand. But there was nothing that we saw that would suggest anything untoward that would have caused it.

Some reports have suggested Warner took exception to Root wearing a false beard because he thought it was ridiculing South African Muslim player Hashim Amla, although the pub says CCTV footage suggests no fancy dress was involved.

Cricket Australia is playing a straight bat. It's not providing details of the incident, nor commenting further until a disciplinary hearing is held via a conference call to Melbourne.

It's just three weeks since Warner was fined for expletive-filled Twitter outbursts against journalists.

And the team is already under pressure, with skipper Michael Clarke battling a degenerative back condition.

ABC commentator Jim Maxwell says if Warner is found guilty of a breach of the code of behaviour this time, officials have a difficult decision to make.

JIM MAXWELL: You know they've got some previous history with him to be concerned about and I don't know whether you can sort of guarantee when you talk to a player about what he's doing that it's not going to recur.

I would hope that he's going to get the last card and an opportunity to play in the Ashes but like a final warning, but that's what it should be.

MARY GEARIN: This comes just a few months after cricket administrators suspended four players, including the vice captain, for essentially not doing paperwork or not doing their homework as it's been reported.

Does this back the administrators into a bit of a corner when they have to think about the disciplinary approach towards David Warner?

JIM MAXWELL: Well it does because that was a very clumsily handled matter and there was, I think, an overreaction. But the way that was paraded to the rest of the world left Australia looking very embarrassed in the way it managed its affairs.

So I don't think they'll want a repetition of that. But as you suggest, having been pretty fierce in their punishment of dropping players from the team for what appeared to be something fairly minor, it does set a precedent. And if that's the case, you wonder where they're going to go from here given that we're on the verge of a very important series.